Untamed in Ulaanbaatar
Well ...
... Ullaanbaatar, Mongolia was a wonderfully challenging experience ... reaffirmed, if you want to make a difference you have to do things normal people would think are too radical/incomprehensible ... maybe the biggest hurdle to get over ... you think "fungus" ... the word in use now as my partner, a completely fluent english speaker/writer though not her native tongue, uses f--- often in public saying it is a fun word pretty devoid of meaning for her ... makes me uncomfortable ... we agree to use "fungus" as a replacement ... now i too have fun ... it seems a good choice ...
... so fungus ... performance/poem "Untamed" is not going to work/be understood/be accepted or appreciated ... you think fungus ... so just do it ... it might work ... note "make a difference" not succeed because then what the fungus does success mean ... seventy years old now ... need to throw caution to the wind ...
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| photo during performance by Kakumoto Atsushi |
"It was a very vivid experience to be at the Saint Muse, but it also increased some scrutinization. It made me in some ways more aware of my aesthetic and performative pathways and for the journey it will become.I want to thank you and Aeran Jeong for these beautiful exchanges on art and life."
... often regardless of the obstacles just do it ... "Untamed" ... the festival had an amazing archive theatre project check the photos on FB if you can ... as well there was a surreal journey ...
... oh yes ... before we left we had a full dress rehearsal in Space T ... our Seoul working space ... an academic & theatre critic who asked to follow our practice was the only spectator ... we had a huge desire to provide the new member of the group an opportunity to get some experience before her first professional opening at the festival ... the dress rehearsal was breathtaking ... later the critic described she had witnessed holy theatre ... her words jolted me back to Peter Brook's Empty Space ... rereading chapter holy theatre was enlightening as i had last read the book in my early twenties ... i mentioned that Brook had coined the phrase holy theatre ... the critic replied her perspective came from Kant's meaning of holy ... looking for Kant's reference proved fruitless ... will continue to search ... the latest most fruitful writing i have come across tackling this area is Acting After Grotowski: Theatre's Carnal Prayer by Kris Salata ... Brook wrote his musings in 1968 and Salata in 2020 ...
... unsure where the practice of Performance Group Untamed resides ... but the most influential source has been Zygmunt Molik ... i think listening to John Coltrane is like watching holy theatre for me & perhaps others ...
:: Note:: ... in the midst of project Abandoned ... some Kim Myo-jin rehearsal photos ...
The idea of becomings as encounters we have with partial deaths while still alive takes us back to Deleuze and Guattari's notion that 'the experience of death ... occurs in life and for life ... in every intensity as passage or becoming'. From this standpoint, processes of becoming, in which we undergo continuous small deaths, can put us in the path of a more impersonal more sober relation to our own death. if we are successful at confronting and sustaining their intensity, processes of becoming can soften the rigidity of our selves, weaken our grasp of permanent realities and identities, and mitigate our fears and anxieties toward change. In fulfilling the immanence of death to life - offering us rudimentary but real instances of the experience of death-in-life - processes of becoming help us accept the idea of life continuing beyond 'me'.
Elena del Rio, The Grace of Destruction
